J.C. Chandor talks Robert Redford and his new film ‘All Is Lost’

While his new film, “All Is Lost,” starring Robert Redford as a yachtsman on a sinking boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean, has mysteries of its own, the director J.C. Chandor was sort of born into one.

The J stands for Jeffrey and his middle initial is M, but “for some reason my parents went with JC.” And that’s what everyone has called him since — except for a religious studies professor.

“He called me Jeffrey and I kept correcting him, until I realized after three weeks he was a born again Christian and was never going to call me JC.”

At first, the ebullient Chandor doesn’t seem like he could be the guy who wrote and directed “All Is Lost,” which opened Friday to mostly rave reviews. The one hour, 46-minute movie has only one character: Redford’s unnamed man who spends eight days trying to keep from going under. There’s almost no dialogue. It begins with a prologue, a literal message in a bottle, and after that, it’s almost wordless.

Don’t confuse that with silence, though.

“When I started pitching it, people would say, ‘Oh, so it’s a silent film’ and I’d say, ‘No, it’s like a Hollywood blockbuster” with natural sounds,” says the 39-year-old Chandor who did commercials before making his first feature, the acclaimed 2011 financial thriller “Margin Call,” starring Kevin Spacey.

“Sound is everything,” he explains, noting that most of the moments in the film, like the clamor of a storm battering the boat, were written into the script.

“When I’m alone at night in a house in the woods, every sound is heightened,” he said.

Having done some sailing, he says boats are like drums, which amplify noises.

Chandor got the idea for “All Is Lost” while commuting between Providence, RI, where he lived, and New York City, where he was forced to edit “Margin Call” because of budget constraints. At the time, he and his wife had a newborn and a 4-year-old, and it was “getting stressful taking the train back and forth.”

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It was fall and he began to notice boats that had been moved onshore.

“There is nothing more depressing to me than a boat up on wooden stilts—seless,” he says. “And I began thinking of all the adventures that you didn’t have in those boats that you thought you would.”

The director says he thought of offering the role to Redford when he saw him at 2011 Sundance Film Festival, where “Margin Call” premiered, but waited a couple months to polish the script. Within a few days of sending it to the Hollywood icon, he was in Redford’s office in Los Angeles.

“He was unbelievably trusting. Ten minutes into our first meeting, he said yes — and it really did happen that quickly,” says Chandor.

“I think he was ready to turn himself over completely. He had just come off directing himself in ‘The Company You Keep’ and had been staring at his own face a few weeks before we met.”

Chandor says he heard stories about how Redford and the late filmmaker Sydney Pollack — a friend and longtime collaborator — would fight on the set, but such sparks never happened on “All Is Lost.”

“He was always totally in the moment,” says Chandor. “And I think if you ask, he never thought of directing the movie. I think he found it really freeing.”

The film used three identical 39-foot sailboats — one for exterior scenes, one for interiors and another for special effects. Most of it was shot in Baja, Mexico, where James Cameron built giant tanks for “Titanic.”

Chandor says they used the “bungee-cord rule” for the first two-thirds of the movie, shooting within 10 and 12 feet of Redford. “So we’d be sort of attached to this guy. We wanted to create a sense of tension and intimacy without being overly claustrophobic.”

The last part of the film becomes more expansive.

“I’m hoping the movie becomes yours by the third act and has emotionally brought you in,” says the filmmaker, who adds that he always felt it was then that the film depended on Redford.

“I told him, you keep bringing the audience in and keep them connected, and I’ll keep them interested and on the edge of their seats, but by the third act, emotionally, you’re going to have to take this movie over and really go somewhere.”

Most people who have seen the film think that Chandor — who received an Oscar nomination for his “Margin Call” script — has succeeded admirably. There is also a lot of talk of a best-actor nomination for the now 77-year-old Redford, who did most of his own stunts in the physically demanding film.

“The story becomes very personal” to the audience, Chandor said. “It’s either them or someone near them .

“And that is something only Robert Redford can do. He’s able to have that youthful refusal to give up while also having a history laid before you.”

The filmmaker is hoping to start shooting his next project, “A Most Violent Year,” in the spring.

“I’ve been waiting such a long time for this. It’s fun to have opportunities.”